


The Diary of Sensations

by pluperfectsunrise



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Fairy Tale Elements, Ghost Harry, M/M, Severus feels, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-10
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:02:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21737281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pluperfectsunrise/pseuds/pluperfectsunrise
Summary: After the end of the war, Harry is stuck in a train station. And Severus is being haunted.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Severus Snape
Comments: 51
Kudos: 177





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [miamam](https://archiveofourown.org/users/miamam/gifts).



> This story is for miamam in gratitude for translating A Snake's Story into Čeština. Thank you again! 
> 
> I wanted to start posting it for Halloween, but that didn't happen for several reasons. So you can have it now, lol. I'm writing bite-sized chapters for this one because that's all I can handle at the moment.
> 
> The E rating is for...eventualities.

The Boy Who Only Lived Once, they were calling Potter now in the Daily Prophet.

Every morning, Severus cast the copy the post-owl dropped on his front step into the fire after little more than a glance through its stiff pages. The twaddle it liked to call "news" was always much of the same. The war had ended; the trials were over. Shacklebolt was the interim Minister. Hogwarts was being rebuilt, almost ready to welcome the students back after nearly six months of repairs.

And Harry Potter was still, to all intents and purposes, dead.

 _The prophecy fulfilled_ , the Prophet bemoaned. And _Great sacrifices ensuring victory._

So why, then, was Severus staring at the whorl of one of Potter's ears in the hand mirror he used for shaving, a mirror that surely should have reflected Severus's own weary face back at him?

He hadn't realized that he would be able to recognize the boy by his ears.

But the ear in question was definitely Potter's—he'd witnessed Potter stick a quill behind it often enough. The one on the right. Scalloped like a seashell, partially obscured by a lick of that wretched thick, ungovernable James Potter hair. And yes, there was the hooked temple tip of Potter's glasses, a duller black than the curls that partially obscured it. The spectacles' earpiece flared out and led the eye down to an incongruously soft-looking detached lobe. 

There was a bit of grime behind it. Potter hadn't washed recently, it seemed.

Severus pulled his wand from the secret pocket he'd sewn for it in his nightshirt and cast a Finite on the mirror.

Nothing happened.

He cast a few more spells just to be sure, but the same nothing that had not-happened before kept on not-happening. There, in his shaving mirror at just past 7 a.m. on an otherwise colorless autumn morning, was an ear, enlarged and magnified. It was Harry Potter's. Severus's gaze, if Severus's gaze wished, could linger on the finest details, the delicacy of its shape, the tiny hairs that quivered with an air current that the man couldn't feel (or perhaps a sound he couldn't hear). 

Severus took a long step backward, out through the open door of the bathroom and back into his bedroom. The peeling hardwood floor was rougher against his bare feet than the tiles of the loo had been. The morning light was spilling in from the window, white with the fog that beaded against the other side of the glass. 

He closed the door and counted to ten, which meant regulating his breathing, forcing five inhales and five exhales through his teeth far more slowly than the pounding of his heart.

He opened the door again.

The ear was gone. The hand mirror showed the flaked yellow paint on the wall of the loo, and then, when Severus picked it up to face it directly, his own sallow skin, limp hair, wide eyes.

He set the mirror down once more and crawled back into bed, pulling the blankets over his head against the October chill.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! More soon.


	2. Chapter 2

Even now, nearly half a year after surviving Nagini, Severus felt the cold keenly. 

He was prone to fits of trembling, his muscles cramping and useless. Alternately, there were moments—hours—where he would grow feverish, his thoughts bleary and chasing each other in loops without beginning or end.

The venom was what had done this to him. Thanks to the medical training he'd received with his potions mastery, he was fairly sure that no traces of it remained in his body. But it had weakened him. 

Irreparably, he suspected. He had no illusions that the sensitivity to cold, the fevers, the exhaustion—all of it—wouldn't last for the rest of his life.

So he kept the house warm. 

~

The house. It was Severus's house, not his father's house at Spinner's End. He'd bought it the year before the Dark Lord's return, the summer after Pettigrew was un-ratted and then disappeared.

He liked it here. There were fields in front and a river behind; and behind that, a forest. There was a Muggle village nearby for visiting the shops twice a week. He'd carted all of his books here during the year he spent as headmaster. He kept a coop of chickens in the backyard for the eggs.

One thing that he particularly liked about the house was the sky that stretched above it. He'd lived in the dungeons for far too long. Because he had the opportunity to really watch the sky now, he was starting to understand what a wild sort of creature it was. It was a great emptiness, and yet it could reach down and seize the two poplars at the border of his property, rattling all of their leaves off, making their boughs whip from side to side. It was Severus's private opinion that, if they hadn't been particularly brave and stubborn trees, the thrust of the wind would have knocked them over long ago. 

But instead they wrestled with it daily, the heaving tumult of wind and weather, a ceaseless confrontation with forces beyond their control. And Severus had learned how to split logs, even with arms that seized up after the third swing of the axe.

~

He knew that certain parties, while perhaps not actively searching for him, would be highly interested in obtaining his whereabouts. It tended to make a splash, when you executed one of the great conductors of a war, then turned around and murdered the other less than a year later.

Clouded. His memories of killing Albus were clouded by emotion. Panic, despair. Fear for the students and the other faculty members, who he'd occasionally (in the years when his mind was a relatively private place) allowed himself to consider with a tetchy fondness and respect. The bitter resentment—even now, he wouldn't call it hate—of the Headmaster that he'd summoned in order to be sure that his fatal curse would strike true. Fury, at Potter, for having Severus's book and reminding Severus of his gravest mistakes; for never doing what he was told, for being so fucking cavalier with the life that _Lily had died to protect_ ; for having been set up by Albus to die as well, even after Severus had given up eighteen fucking years to make sure that didn't happen.

So yes, emotions. He didn't remember killing Albus very clearly.

By contrast, his memories of the Dark Lord's death were sharp. He remembered being summoned to the Shrieking Shack. He remembered begging. He remembered the snake being released from her glowing cage and how it had taken him a few seconds to feel the pain.

He remembered Potter's eyes.

He remembered spending his last burst of energy on the spell to release his memories. In the end, he'd given Potter more than he'd intended. The soul was a treacherous thing, it seemed. He'd lived the life of an antisocial bastard—but, in the end, what he'd most wanted was to be known.

After that, everything had been hazy for a time. He'd regained awareness to the sound of phoenix song and the warm slide of Fawkes's tears over his rapidly healing skin, the bird's head and the hard surface of his beak dipped low into the bloody mess where Severus's neck should have met his shoulder.

As soon as he was able, he'd lurched through the tunnel and stumbled out from beneath the Whomping Willow, which was when he'd discovered that there was still a battle raging in the castle.

The school's defenders were making a last stand. Staggering into the Great Hall, Severus had passed Nagini's beheaded corpse and felt a wave of something too cold to be satisfaction…

…because that was also the same moment, approximately, that he'd spotted Potter's body.

It was on the floor, sprawled across the fucking teachers' dais like some kind of sacrificial offering. The Dark Lord was standing regally in front of it. He was watching his Death Eaters as they mowed through the remaining Order members and Aurors and students. Far too many students. Molly Weasley was dueling Bellatrix Lestrange. 

Severus ducked out, passed dead Nagini again, and circled around to the teachers' entrance. The Dark Lord was distracted by the surprise of Bellatrix's death. His shields fell with a ripple as he hissed his rage and raised his wand.

"Avada Kedavra," Severus said for the second time.

Fawkes had been perched on his head the whole while.

~

He'd entertained a fantasy, one night a few months ago when he'd had too much to drink—his father's vice—about what it would have been like if Potter had somehow managed to survive. If Potter had been the one to destroy Voldemort.

It would have been a sight to behold. The hero, brash and bespectacled and too fucking young, angry and righteous. Gallant. Pure of heart. 

Potter had always been lucky. He would have probably managed to kill the Dark Lord in some manner that would leave his soul as unmarked as fresh snowfall, maybe half by accident.

But Severus’s way was not Gryffindor heroics, and it never would be. The magical equivalent of a knife in the back, in his opinion, was a perfectly valid way for the monster who had killed Lily—and now her son—to die.

He'd been numb at that point, he supposed. Why else would he be able to remember it all so clearly? How quickly the creature who had once been the man named Tom Riddle had sunk to the ground? How a shocked hush, a vacuum of sound, had slowly spread among the wizards and witches who still stood?

Fenrir Greyback had rushed toward him with a slavering howl. Severus dispatched him with an Incarcerus. Let the Aurors have him. 

Digging his talons into Severus's scalp, Fawkes had sung.

~

When Severus walked out of the ruined castle, no one had stopped him. He’d walked until he was out of sight, and then he’d Apparated to the front of his house. 

And then he'd fallen to the ground and crawled.

To the wizarding world, he'd disappeared at that point. In the Prophet, speculation ran that he’d died from his wounds. Wishful thinking, Severus supposed.

It was a complicated ending, much more complicated than the public at large was willing to stomach. They’d wanted a clean victory of the light, and instead they’d gotten a dead boy hero and a Death Eater whose treachery ran so deep, no one could tell where it ended, where it began. 

Even Severus wasn’t precisely sure about that anymore. He’d known it during the war—he’d had to, otherwise he’d never have been able to cast a Patronus, as the darkness would have eaten his core. But now, even though he remembered most of what had happened clearly, it was all twisted, transformed. 

When he dreamed, it was of a young man with tight shoulders and dirt on his face, walking with determination to his death.


	3. Chapter 3

The second time Severus witnessed a piece of Harry Potter in a place where no piece of Harry Potter belonged, it was early one morning a week before Halloween.

The previous night, the year's first frost had swept over his house and its surroundings.

He'd gone outside to check whether the warming charms on his hen house had held through the night. If not, he'd have to consider bringing his chickens indoors with him for the winter.

As he was sliding the screen door closed behind him, however, the gleam of ice in a bucket of water he'd left under a drainpipe caught his eye.

There was a hand in the ice.

Fuck, was Severus's first thought at the sight. Fucking fuckity fuck.

As with the ear, an unaccustomed certainty was quick to blossom in Severus's breast. It had two freckles and a mole. A swathe of scar tissue that might once have been words. It was Harry Potter's hand. The one on the left.

Despite its scars, it was a youthful hand. The fingernails were bitten to the quick, dark shadows of grime embedded deep in the cuticles. The knuckles were chapped and reddened. The fingers were short but tapering. The hand was splayed open, palm down, the fingertips and thumb appearing to rest against some surface. It was as if Potter were leaning his hand on a table while his attention was focused elsewhere, maybe on the sort of impassioned nonsense that Severus had heard him spout while standing Disillusioned in a corner of the Room of Requirement during the boy's fifth year—and watching Potter successfully teach twenty-two students to cast a Patronus, something no DADA teacher in Severus's memory had ever managed to accomplish.

He knew that hand. He _knew_ it. He'd seen it too often over the years (catching the snitch, tightening into a fist, rubbing a stray hair from the edge of Potter's startlingly full lips) to mistake it for any other. 

At the sight, something long-atrophied inside of Severus gave a tremble and then a thrum.

He was reaching out before he was aware of the urge—

(the need)

—to do so. He wanted to see if the hand was warm. He wanted to see whether it would startle away from his own or curl against it, the opposite of resistance.

But all that happened was that his fingers collided with the solid chill of the ice, wet where it had begun to melt once the sun rose. He pressed down, and it buckled and fractured into thin icecaps that crashed against the bucket's sides. His sleeve was soaked, his arm submerged.

He didn't know what he'd been expecting. 

Potter's hand was gone.


	4. Chapter 4

The seasons were changing. Autumn was coming and going quickly, this year. The darknesses were lengthening, daylight surrendering to the greed of night. Every twilight meant gusts of wind battering the windows, rattling the panes of glass in their warped frames. The bulbs left over on Severus's rosebushes turned orange on the ends of their stalks. The leaves on the poplars behind the house turned yellow and then fell, leaving the branches bare and cold and silver.

It was almost Halloween. When Severus went to the Muggle village for his groceries, he saw rows of jack o’ lanterns with their bright, ghoulish grins. He tried not to feel as if they were watching him as he passed.

~

Severus’s life as October wound to a close was a puzzle of moments that didn't fit together.

He did chores—keeping the house clean, preparing his sparse meals. He didn't have much of an appetite, even with all of the unexpected surviving he'd been getting up to lately. 

He fed his chickens and installed a stove in their hen house to keep them warm.

He read _The Master and Margarita_ , again. Annie Dillard's _An American Childhood_. A book about the Edo period in Japan that he’d found in the village’s small bookshop. 

He attempted to keep a regular schedule and to get enough sleep. Sometimes, he even succeeded.

And yet, there were several discordant notes in this simple melody. Because the seasons were changing, and Severus was going mad.

Pieces of Harry Potter seemed to be everywhere he looked. In the burnished surface of a doorknob, he saw the back of one of Harry Potter's knees. In the water pooling at the bottom of the sink as he set the dishes to wash, he saw a slice of Harry Potter's abdomen, including his navel and a cowlicked tuft of hair below it. In the partially rusted metal spout in Severus's bathtub, he saw Harry Potter's grim jaw.

And then came Halloween night.

It was the middle of it. The world outside was black and wind-stricken, a long howl of a storm. Severus had lost track of the hours he’d spent unable to sleep, caught in a primitive fear that his house would blow down.

So he'd passed the time by drinking. In any case, going on a bender on Halloween night had been a tradition for Severus since Lily's death—although he suspected it would be nothing from now on to how pissed he would get on May 2nd and 3rd.

When he was getting up to use the loo, however, he looked, in passing, toward the sitting room window. It was glistening with droplets of water against the dark backdrop of the night, and Potter stood in it next to Severus’s own reflection. 

The way Severus's heart stopped washed through his blood like a wave descending the sand.

Experience had taught him that he would see nothing behind him if he turned around, but he still jumped and slashed his wand into the empty space at his back.

“ _Hominum revelio_ ,” he hissed, turning back and raising his wand toward the glass (although it was hardly the appropriate spell).

Nothing happened.

Nothing except that Potter was still skewering Severus with the green of his eyes. He was mouthing a word, one syllable. Over and over again.

“Snape,” he said, and suddenly Severus could hear his voice.

“Snape, can you hear me? God, I hope you can… Snape!”

Severus was shaking violently.

“Snape?” Potter tried again, more pathetic this time.

Severus could feel his magic thrumming hotly. He darted a wild glance around his familiar home, and nothing looked as if it were the right size or shape. His heartbeat was a jolting gallop in his chest now.

“Potter,” he snarled, finally finding his voice to reply.

Potter blinked at him rapidly, then surged forward against the glass. Severus couldn't see his own reflection in it at all anymore.

“Professor," he gasped, "you have to let me in. I’m trying, but I can’t—all the doors are stuck closed. If you just opened one—”

“I don’t want you here!" Severus answered in a roar. "Begone!”

“Please, Snape. I saw your memories." Potter was looking and sounding more desperate now. "I know that we were on the same side. I just need a way in, one bloody way—”

Severus forced himself to step back. When had he gotten so close to the glass? “I’m drunk. I’m imagining this.”

“No! I’m almost there!”

But despite how fiercely Potter had shouted this, he disappeared between one second and the next. The boy was gone now, his words echoing in the empty space he’d left behind.

Severus raised his wand and broke the window.

Then he threw open the front door. The sliding one in the back, too.

Then he went into each room and shattered the windows, one by one.

The storm was surging into the house. He could hear the rain singing.

He dragged the heaviest blankets he could find into bed with him and finally fell asleep.

~

Severus was going mad.

He was going mad, or he was being haunted by Harry Potter’s ghost.

~

At the present moment, he was having a dream. It was still about Potter, of course. 

Potter, with the cataclysm of his hair and the slenderness of his hips. Severus had woken up after the ferocity of the storm, and Potter was lying on the bed next to him, his eyes closed, his chest rising and falling with steady breaths. Hardly daring to believe, Severus laid a hand against the boy’s warm and bare shoulder, thumb aligning with the freckles where it curved.

Potter blinked himself awake muzzily. When his eyes settled on Severus, instead of looking alarmed or appalled, he gave Severus a soft smile.

Severus surged forward and kissed him.

Potter stiffened, but soon he was groaning breathily and scratching the fingernails of one hand up and down Severus’s back while fisting the other in Severus's lank hair.

“Oh my god,” the younger man gasped, breaking away from the kiss to dip his face into the hollow of Severus’s neck. “God, _Snape_ , I had no idea—”

Severus reeled upward into consciousness.

For an instant, he had no clue where he was. In the dream, his bed had been bathed in warmth and sunlight. In this other world, the waking one, the light was gray and the temperature was freezing. His blankets were all gone—he'd kicked them off in the night—and he was shivering uncontrollably.

And Harry Potter was standing on the other side of the room. 

His eyes were wide. He was dressed in a thick jacket, torn denims, trainers.

He was translucent. 

“Snape,” Potter sighed again in a small voice when Severus could only stare.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoutout to DiGrange for telling me to have Sev put a stove in with his chickens for the winter. To which my response is, "Oh yeah, that makes sense," lol.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A long stretch between chapters? Unheard of!
> 
> But seriously, I'm sorry. Thank you so much for waiting. Love you all. I hope everyone's staying safe. Updates should be more regular going forward <3

They stared at each other.

“I shouldn’t have done that,” Severus said. His lips were still tingling and flushed from the contact, almost a burning sensation.

“Not without my permission,” Potter agreed from where he was standing with his back to the wall. His shoulders had loosened somewhat with Severus's apology, however.

His shoulders, through which Severus could make out details of the peeling wallpaper. As Potter swayed, they traveled slightly into the wallpaper in question as if submerging in water, then popped back out again. The young man didn't seem to notice.

They stared at each other some more.

Potter—or Potter's phantom—finally broke this standoff by shuffling to the side, then turning on one foot and leaving through the open bedroom door.

Severus kicked off his remaining bedcovers and climbed to his feet to follow.

But when he reached his sitting room, Potter only stared at him awkwardly. “I just thought you might want to get dressed,” Potter explained, looking Severus up and down with a flush on his cheeks but something steely in his expression.

It was true that Severus was only wearing last night's ratty nightshirt and socks. One of them had a hole in it from the callous on his heel. 

He turned back around, retreated to privacy, and dressed himself. Robes this time, not the muggle clothing that he'd been living in since the war's end. He needed to try to salvage _some_ of his dignity.

Once he’d finished, he exited his bedroom again to find Potter taking a look around...at everything from the mess of shattered glass on Severus’s floor to the water stains where the storm had blown in through the open door and the unshielded windows. There was a pool on his kitchen floor at least a centimeter deep. A lamp in the corner had fallen over and was probably bent beyond repair, even of the magical variety. Severus's walls of bookshelves were, for a mercy, the only thing that seemed to have come through the night unscathed.

Severus pulled his wand from his sleeve and began to clean up, surreptitiously studying Potter all the while.

Aside from his general translucency, the younger man looked just as he'd looked on the day he died, from what Severus remembered of the body. Denims and a thick but ripped jacket, both showing signs of too many cleaning charms and overuse. Smudges of dirt and blood and ash everywhere—elbows, knees, hands, cheekbones, one corner of his spectacles. Trainers caked with mud. Light and straggly stubble on his cheeks. A riot of unwashed hair atop his head, worn longer than Severus had ever seen it when the boy had been in school. Perhaps haircuts hadn't been high on the to-do list when he and Granger and Weasley had been on the run.

Severus realized that Potter was watching him frankly in return.

Severus straightened from his efforts to tidy the wreck that the previous night's events had made of his home. (Severus's thoughts were in just as much chaos as his surroundings, but there was little he could do about _that_ at the moment.) They regarded each other in silence once more.

“Is Tom dead?” Harry Potter finally asked.

Severus had to clear his throat before he spoke. “If you mean the Dark Lord…yes.”

“The war is over?”

“Yes.”

“How long has it been since…" The young man trailed off. His gaze darted across his surroundings again. Severus could see him swallow. "It looks like it’s been a while.”

“The date is November 1st, 1998.”

Potter blinked once at this and nodded, looking grim. “And my friends? Hermione and Ron? Ginny?”

“I have not seen their obituaries in the Prophet.”

“Fuck.” Potter appeared to exhale, then bent slightly and scrubbed a hand through his hair, hiding his face. “Thank Merlin.”

“Fred Weasley died in the Battle,” Severus felt compelled to point out.

The boy looked up at him again. “I know," he said. "I was there for that.”

Severus could see the stricken grief in his expression. Potter had always worn his heart out in the open for anyone to examine and manipulate as they wished.

Severus couldn’t quite bring himself to offer his condolences. He should, shouldn't he? But this whole situation was ludicrous—or far beyond it. Harry Potter was dead, to begin with. Given that one inimitable fact, why on earth was he here right now, raised from the grave and bursting with heartbreak and queries? And why did Severus feel as if he owed Potter the answers? And why was Potter grieving those who had died—when Potter had already met the rider of that pale horse as well?

While Severus had been entertaining these speculations, Potter had apparently come to some resolution of his own. “I think I need your help, Professor,” he said, looking at Severus squarely once again with pleading in his eyes.

Severus's front door, still hanging open crookedly on one hinge, chose that moment to creak. The wind made itself known as well, for it was a wet and white and cold November morning. A wave of gooseflesh traveled over Severus's arms under his sleeves. Light gleamed on the jagged edges of the broken glass that still littered the floor.

And something inside of Severus was shifting, growing, locking into place.

“Get out,” he snarled, uncrossing his arms from his chest to point at the door.

Potter gaped at him.

Severus realized that he was trembling violently. No matter. He could still make his wishes known. 

Because it came down to this: how dare Potter be here right now when by rights he should have been enjoying whatever the afterlife had in store for dutiful slaughtered lambs? How dare Potter defy death itself in order to upend Severus’s hard-earned peace?

"Snape..." his visitor began again.

Severus drew his wand and pointed it at the boy.

“How many ways do I have to say it, Mr. Potter? You are not welcome here, and you will leave immediately." He bared his teeth. "I refuse to be your nanny this time. Whatever your problems are, they have fuck all to do with me. Solve them yourself, for the first time in your life.”

Rather to Severus's surprise, neither his words nor his drawn wand incited Potter to pull out his own wand in return. 

Yet, the apparition's posture made his attitude clear. He was shifting his feet to a firmer stance, holding his ground. “I’ve fought for everything I have, Professor," Potter answered in a quiet voice that nonetheless held a bedrock of determination.

Continuing to stare at the other man down the length of his wand, because Salazar knew wasn't going to lower it, Severus felt his lips twist into a familiar sneer. “Of course," he spat out. "And you’ve certainly never had anyone who was willing to lie for you, or cheat for you, or carry your fight forward when you failed, or lay down their life for you."

Potter rocked backwards, but somehow managed to lift his chin again and continue meeting Severus's eyes. “People have died so that I could keep fighting, yeah," he admitted, his voice still husky and low. "But it was their fight, too. And yours.”

Severus's breath left his body in a hiss. “It isn’t anymore."

“You kissed me,” Potter shot back without giving Severus's denial time to settle.

In a dream. He'd kissed Potter _in a bloody dream._ How Potter had been able to witness the events of that dream was a mystery to Severus, but one thing was entirely clear: Potter had had no more business being in that dream than he had being here, right now, shattering the only true sanctuary that Severus had ever found during the miserable course of his life.

“A momentary lapse in sanity," Severus clipped out roughly. 

A surge of wind from the shivery morning outside blew against him, catching the ends of his hair and his robes. 

Realizing that he'd started to lower his wand, he raised it once more. "I will not discuss it further."

“Fine," the aggravating dead boy responded hotly. Unsurprisingly, the wind had no effect on him. Restless—and still entirely ignoring the threat of being at Severus's wandpoint—he paced back and forth between Severus's kitchen and the couch. 

"But we do still have unfinished business, and you know it,” Potter added in a sullen tone once he'd come to a stop again, almost sulky. Oh, how well Severus knew that burning gaze and the obstinate set to that mouth.

And what an overly appropriate choice of words. Trust a block-headed Gryffindor like Potter to have no problems with being cliche.

Severus sneered again. “I know nothing of the sort. Go haunt someone who cares.”

“Haunt?” Potter repeated, a furrow appearing between his thick eyebrows.

It was Severus's turn to blink and frown. Could it be that the absurd creature had used the trite words coincidentally? That Potter had no idea... That he didn't understand...

Severus cast a spell.

It didn't matter what it was. His brandished wand had been a bluff all along, since magic didn't stick to phantoms like it did to the living. (The spell was a jelly-legs jinx.)

Potter’s wand was finally in his hand now, almost too fast for Severus to have seen him draw it. The boy's lips moved.

But whatever Potter had meant to do, raise a shield or counterattack...it didn't happen. Nothing happened. Severus’s spell slipped through him and hit the wall and disappeared.

Potter gave a sharp shiver. He looked down at himself.

“I’m a ghost,” he said after a moment of staring through his own semi-transparent chest, shocked and just a tinge hysterical.

No. Just, _no_. Severus did not want to get involved in this. He looked around at the shambles that Potter's untimely manifestation had wreaked on the careful order of his home. He needed to muster his reserves and throw Potter out before the boy could do irreversible damage.

“So it would appear,” Severus heard himself saying instead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anyone want to take odds on Severus avoiding helping Harry? ;)


End file.
